Toward the end of “The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!” are two pages that capture the comedic brilliance of this children’s book. One page is an illustration of The Daily Pig newspaper with the headline “Big Bad Wolf.” The other page is exposition on how the book’s main character, A.Wolf, was framed for the death of two pigs by news reporters who “jazzed up the story with all of that ‘huff and puff and blow your house down.’” The playful retelling of the three little pigs is why Jon Scieszka’s book remains unforgettable 30 years later.
Published in 1989, the reputation of Scieszka’s book has grown thanks to an internet-fueled wistfulness for the past, i.e. the resurgence of Polaroids, vinyls, and Fila, notwithstanding. “The True Story Of The 3 Little Pigs!” is a frequent fixture on Reddit’s r/nostalgia where the mere sight of its cover triggers childhood reminiscences. What many of these fans don’t realize is how close the book was to never happening.
The story behind “The True Story Of The 3 Little Pigs!” begins in the 1980s. Scieszka had just moved from Michigan to New York City to pursue a master’s in fiction writing at Columbia University. He painted apartments in the Upper East Side to make money. Scieszka told me he eventually landed a job teaching at an alternative elementary school where there were no grades. While there, he took a year off to read the likes of Jorge Luis Borges and Thomas Pynchon. He also spent time “mashing up my adult favorites and the history and forms of writing for kids,” Scieszka said.
“I love the oldest tales – myths, fables, legends, fairy tales,” Scieszka said. “And I love an unreliable narrator. I also loved that my 2nd graders’ response to almost any question I would begin to ask them was, ‘I didn’t do it.’ So having the wolf tell his side of the story combined all those loves.”
It was during that year that Scieszka’s passion for reimagining tales produced “The True Story Of The 3 Little Pigs!,” a story about empathy and the power of interpreting from different perspectives. The book’s framed-by-the-press angle came from reading tabloids like the New York Post in the 1980s, Scieszka said. His story was brought to life by artist Lane Smith, 59. Smith had recently moved to New York City from California where his artwork was featured in punk publications, new wave albums, and alternative weeklies like the L.A. Reader. The pair created a manuscript and a few illustrations, which ended up getting rejected by publishers “countless times,” Scieszka said.
“The illustrations freaked people out,” he said. “Some of the rejection letters ranged from simple form letters to ‘you should not be writing for children.’”
Determined to make “The True Story Of The 3 Little Pigs!” a reality, Smith ended up creating a dummy book with samples of how the finished art would look. The illustrations were dark, detailed, and surreal. One of Smith’s favorite images features A.Wolf walking alone toward a straw house in the distance underneath an overcast sky. His other favorite image was the book’s cover, which features the front page of a newspaper called the Daily Wolf.
“This was pre-Photoshop, pre-computers, and the title and our names were done in press type, rub-on letters one could buy at an art store,” Smith said. “The newspaper clippings I collaged onto the painting were mostly from notorious crime stories.”
With that dummy book, Scieszka and Lane broke their losing streak at Viking Penguin. “The True Story Of The 3 Little Pigs!” has since been translated into 20 languages, including French, Dutch, Chinese, and Braille. More than 4 million copies have been sold to date. In 2012, Betsy Bird, the collection development manager of Evanston Public Library and the former youth materials specialist of New York Public Library, ranked Scieszka and Lane’s work among the Top 100 Picture Books of all time. Bird praised Scieszka’s ability to tell a tale kids find hilarious while simultaneously triggering deeper thoughts.
“It is said that humor never gets the respect that it truly deserves. Humor is incredibly subjective, and misery is pretty universal. Happily, if any author has come close to being universally recognized for his humor, it would have to be Jon,” Bird told me.
Scieszka still writes from his home in Brooklyn where he’s lived the past 40 years. He’s working on a new “The Stinky Cheese Man” book and a third graphic novel. Smith and Dave Eggers published the children’s book “Tomorrow Most Likely” this month.
